“Get up,” that voice says—persistent as always—what peels me from the comfort of my bed, what lifts me from the bloodied concrete. It is not my own, but my mother’s voice calling to me. “Get up,” she says again as she will until I do.

I’m crumpled up. Someone has tossed me out and missed the trash can, but, then again, I’ve never known their aim to be off. There’s a chance they’ll come out and bring me in from the cold, pull down my edges and straighten me out as best they can. “Good as new,” they’ll say, but the creases will still be there. There’s an equal chance they’ll find me just to crush me under their heel. I won’t stay to find out.

It’s that moment again. The one that pours every poison from my mind into my mouth and forces me to swallow. They don’t care how sick it makes me. It’s the feeling of burning and freezing at the same time without being able to determine which hurts more. It’s looking back and thinking, I should’ve seen this coming.

Even in my inadequacy, she will not relent. She will make me stand up with the strength that I do not have, on the bones that are broken, and make me live even though dying feels so much more natural now. She’ll carry me if she has to, but she won’t leave me—some days I beg her to. Some days she’s tempted. As convinced that I cannot, she is convinced I can. I am stumbling; I am crashing; I am running without shoes and crying about my cut feet. She is ceaseless; she is certain; she is fighting forever and never faltering.

She is fortitude.

Some people mistakenly take me for strong but, I’m as weak as they come. My mother is my strength. She is my backbone and my fists. She is me holding my tongue. She is me calming my tremors. She is my calculated words. She is the deepest parts of my heart.

I fear the evil of man, but she understands it. She’s seen the darkest corners of this world, of men’s minds.

On the surface, my mother is sharp and jagged. She has a million ways she can cut, but chooses not to. Below the surface, my mother is boundless. She is free only in the cavern of her own soul where the hands of those who gave her those edges cannot reach. She has sealed it, not to keep the dark out, but the light burning. On the inside my mother is magic and danger, but adventure all the same. Inside my mother is a love and a kindness that this earth has tried to kill, but has remained—it’s one of the most rare resources in the world.

God blessed me with this woman as my mother. With that comes the responsibility to protect and to fight by her side. This is just a reminder of what I’m fighting for.